“Shanghai”… The China syndrome

The “most progressive state in the country” has embarked on an ambitious redevelopment project that hints at the title of Dibakar Banerjee’s new film, Shanghai. It’s called International Business Park, and the acronym is reconfigured – on stage, during a celebratory dance performance by an “imported kamariya” (no lowly desi dancers, after all, will behoove these aspirations) – as India Bana Pardes. Naturally, there is a spoilsport, an activist named Dr. Ahmadi (Prosenjit Chatterjee), who urges the people being relocated (you might say dislocated) to hold on to their lands and not sign any papers. He will soon be assassinated, and this event will set in motion a lengthy, dry procedural that’s also a depiction of a pulsating microcosm of India, situated around a metaphorically named Bharat Nagar. Manmohan Desai, in Desh Premee, reached for a similar metaphor when he set his story in a Bharat Nagar – but had someone like Dr. Ahmadi existed in that film (made in the cinematic climate of those times), he’d have been a saint. Here, he’s something of a sinner.

In an early scene, as Dr. Ahmadi alights from his plane, he is preceded by a leggy starlet, the one with the imported kamariya. She is besieged by the media, whose members are predictably oblivious to Ahmadi’s presence. Do they even know that he’s written a timely book titled Kiski Pragati Kiska Desh?, attacking the development project, and that he’s here to speak out against it? But with Dr. Ahmadi, there’s no self-pity. There are no laments about the trivialisation of the fourth estate. He simply walks up to the starlet and engages in casual conversation, which directs the media’s attention towards him. He’s smart – perhaps even a bit of an opportunist. He’s cut off soon when they realise they have no use for his moralising, and they return to quizzing the starlet about her next film, but he’s snatched for himself a spot of limelight. Even later, before entering the hall for his big speech, he’s hit by a stone, and instead of fulminating with righteous fury, he goes inside and makes light of this incident.

“Victim nahin banna hai,” Dr. Ahmadi tells Shalini (a miscast Kalki Koechlin), a former student with whom he had an affair, and he subsequently issues threats to intimidate a couple of goons harassing her. Dr. Ahmadi, in short, is far from the good-hearted, conservative Muslim we’d have found in the Manmohan Desai era. (Even his wife, a Hindu named Aruna, was a former student of his, and who can say there weren’t more students that he managed to seduce?) It is this sort of detailing that sets apart the films made these days from the ones we got earlier – we now have evasive characters instead of rock-solid archetypes, and Dibakar Banerjee is nothing if not an expert chronicler of character. This is why he gets such fine performances from actors (yes, even Emraan Hashmi) who do so much with so little. We aren’t given a lot of establishing detail about the oleaginous politician played by Farooq Sheikh – and in that sense, he’s certainly embodying the archetype of the Corrupt Man of Power – but by the end, by the time he’s reduced to exquisite bafflement while staring at the skewer of paneer tikka in his fingers, he’s fleshed out as a completely one-of-a-kind character.

Banerjee’s finely honed sense of detailing extends beyond the people in his films to the places they inhabit. There is a delicious sense of the absurdity that surrounds us when Shalini raises her voice outside the room the bloodstained Dr. Ahmadi has been wheeled into and a nurse reprimands her to step outside: “Yeh hospital hai. Please jaake bahar fighting kijiye.” (The line is also an excellent example of how English and Hindi twine so easily in daily usage, unlike the dialogues in our upscale multiplex movies that creak and groan with the strain of being translated into Hindi from the original English.) And elsewhere, when Krishnan (Abhay Deol), who is overseeing the enquiry into Dr. Ahmadi’s assassination, presides over some sort of hearing, a ball rolls in from outside, where kids have been playing. A man’s death is being discussed, and an assistant has to break away to warn a child, “Yeh khelne ki jagah nahin hai,” that this is not a playground. Speaking of which, when was the last time you saw a character sweating it out in a game of badminton?

If God is in the details, then Banerjee’s films are certainly sky-scraping cathedrals. As if in cognizance of unspeakably dirty dealings, something is always being cleaned in the first half – a bookshelf is dusted, a floor is swept, a corridor is mopped (which only causes someone to skid). And when it comes to who really runs the country, we’re shown clearly that it’s not the power brokers who have minions standing by with bottles of mineral water when the taps in the bathrooms run dry, but the great unwashed masses who throng the streets in constant celebration and bring the cars carrying those powerful men to a grinding halt. Banerjee even manages to delineate, through Abhay Deol, a reasonably convincing Tamilian – a far cry from the caricatures we see in films like The Dirty Picture, which are all surface. With Krishnan, we see a neatly trimmed moustache, hints of talking to his amma, and a way of lapsing into owr (instead of aur) and bejna (instead of bhejna). He doesn’t do this always (in other words, he doesn’t overdo this) – just enough to betray his roots, his tongue, no matter how many postings he’s held in Hindi-speaking states.

But look past these dazzling details, and we get a hollow shell of a film that’s about as “timely” as yesterday’s newspaper. When Costa Gavras made Z (from the Vassilis Vassilikos novel that Shanghai is also adapted from; there are nods here in a permission denied to hold an event in a hall, and in a pickup truck that hovers around menacingly), it was the late 1960s. It was the counterculture, when the Cold War (with its threat that the world would vanish in a mushroom cloud) was a frightening reality, and a peace-mongering politician who spoke of disarmament (the equivalent of the Dr. Ahmadi character) was a genuinely vital figure that people identified with. More importantly, that was an era of widespread mistrust. You couldn’t trust the parents who raised you, the politicians who governed you – and Z, along with the decade’s other political thrillers like The Manchurian Candidate, paved the way for the subsequent decade of mainstream Hollywood movies (Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men) that played on audience’s fears about shadowy government conspiracies.

The fear of those times, that the System was corrupt and out to get you, is no longer a fear – it’s an institutionalized reality that we’ve become inured to. Whether this attitude is healthy in a democracy is a different question – but as drama, these stories simply don’t have the power to jolt us anymore. Banerjee is an admirably high-minded filmmaker, and he won’t resort to conventional dramatic devices. A “lesser” filmmaker would salivate at the prospect of milking the transition of Emraan Hashmi’s character (a pornographer named Jogi, whose most telling detail is that he’s a Rajput who’s a skin-saving coward) from uncaring onlooker to an active participant in the political drama that forms the film’s core, and Jogi’s rooftop escape from thugs out to get him might have become an action set piece. But Banerjee won’t go there. He drains the pulp elements of his story of all juice, as if following Hitchcock’s footsteps from Torn Curtain, where an assassin’s murder is presented not as a thrilling set piece but as a protracted and agonising portrait of how difficult killing someone can be.

That may be how things are in real life, but it cannot be the motivation to watch a movie whose trajectory is so numbingly familiar. People keep making Romeo and Juliet over and over, but the reason an Ishaqzaade works is because of the detailing as well as the drama. There is no shame in amusing an audience, as Banerjee himself proved in his masterful Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, which was both a smart critique of the India we live in as well as a bloody entertaining movie. Even the big reveal here, at the end, carries no charge. Besides, if you’re no fan of conventional drama, why incorporate traditional dramatic moments like the Big Reveal? Why stage half-hearted songs like Bharat Mata ki Jai, which is shoehorned badly into the film in a moment that makes no sense? Shanghai is full of memorable filmmaking but it isn’t a memorable film. There’s a lingering sense here of wanting to rise above the material, which is fine, but then why pick this material in the first place? In a sense, the title could refer to Banerjee as well. Like the politicians in the film who want to sacrifice India for a shining simulacrum of China, he’s rejecting the inbuilt cravings of Indian audiences in favour of a low-key, Western kind of sophisticated filmmaking, easier to admire from a critical distance than be entertained by up close.

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Just back from Shanghai. Actually I was back from it last night, but thought I will sleep over it before putting down my thoughts. And so? Disappointed. All my worst fears about the film came true. I would say it was watchable and the performances of both Emran and Abhay were good. And that’s about it.
To start with, at the story level it was very naïve. If an IAS officer could get at a CM so easily everyone would have been doing it. And if it was supposed to be fantasy, then why this pretence of naturalism? I would rather watch Shankar’s Mudalvan where at least some political philosophies are articulated.
Then there is the triteness of the story itself. This kind of political expose may have been new in the 70’s when Z came out. But today it is old hat and does not evoke any kind of disbelief and outrage.
So let’s come to the style and execution. The grammar of cutting scenes midway is novel, but gets irritating after a while. The idea might have been to give the whole proceedings a feel of naturalness , but it only ends up looking arty. Take the speech of Dr Ahmadi about ram asking for water ina mall. It is cut off after the first sentence and the story is completed later when Krishnan is watching the video footgae. But the story is so lame that the punch line has no punch. I so much prefer Salim-Javed’s story of the sone ki murgi in Deewar.

Also if the idea is to present things as they are without over-dramatizing where do songs like Imported Kamariya and Bharat Mata kI Jay come from? You expect me to believe they have dances like that performed at official government functions. Or that they have crowds singing songs like Bharat Mata on the streets. If these are supposed to be artistic liberties then go all the way and stage them properly. When a song like Al I izz well or Give me sunshine is used in 3 Idiots it is in tune with the general narrative style and the words in the songs articulate some thoughts very clearly. Another way of using a song is the Mahie Gill mujra in Gulall. It is witty, picturized with humour and not like a wanna-be item number.
And then there is Kalki. Why the hell she is cast in that role? She behaves like a zombie and looks like an alien. There is no nuance to her performance. She scarcely looks human. Her kiss with Dr Ahmadi is another art film cliché.
The worst part of the film is that it is neither satirical as some critics have commented or offers any new insights. Agreed Hindi films in general overexplain. But this one explains nothing. Shouldn’t the title of Shanghai been touched upon a little more somewhere I the film? There is much more to the idea of Shanghai that just corrupt politicians. If so called ‘ thinking’ directors can up with nothing more than the revelation that the CM herself is behind the land deals, I will take Prakash Jha or Shankar any day ( who at least has the sense to bring out show the middle –class who read the newspaper over a cup of tea and are unwilling to join the hurly-burly of politics are as much to blame as corrupt politicians…in Mudhlavan.) Characters like Dr Ahmadi are cardboard stereotypes and he does not even have anything interesting to say.
That brings me to my general low opinion of political thrillers. In my opinion they are so inadequate at throwing up any in-depth understanding. But at least the best of them like the original Z act as very enjoyable thrillers. This one is just about average as an engaging thriller. The best that one can say about the film is that it is a time pass film. And the time for most part passes quite slowly.

i saw this movie yesterday and felt nothing at all. It was blank. There was master class acts often that would make me smile or amuse me. Being a blogger i couldnt even conjure some words to write about this film. Yet you wrote one of your best write-ups here. Take a bow BR 🙂

Watched Shanghai last night and was waiting eagerly for your take on it. The only point I disagree on is the acting — barring Farooq Sheikh, who did wonders for a character that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, I found the other performances just adequate. Yes, Emraan Hashmi was a pleasant surprise, but that joy was completely negated by Kalki Koechlin employing the same empty, wide-eyed expression on about 6 different occasions. I couldn’t help but compare Shanghai to Kahaani where the casting was exceptional.

Also, what did you make of the slipping-on-the-wet-floor scene? Was it meant to foreshadow how each of the 3 characters would eventually behave in the face of the denouement, or as the mess had been “cleaned” up?

>> “Western kind of sophisticated filmmaking”
Would you say that PST is an Indian kind of sophisticated filmmaking?
I loved that one, and I wonder if such a distinct Indian thing (or rather a collage of elements) exists or could potentially exist later on, if it already doesnt.
I am not a veteran (yet) when it comes to appreciating cinema, and I hope my question is not silly or otherwise. If it has already been answered or discussed in any online source or books, I’d appreciate the info!

travellingslacker: Yeah, it appeared that all the energy was expended in adding flavour and detail and finally they lost track of *what^ they were adding all that flavour and detail to.

For a political thriller, nothing new in the politics, and no thrills either. I wonder how many people in the audience were still invested in whether anyone got punished etc. by the end.

Vanya: About “the slipping-on-the-wet-floor scene,” I didn’t see it as a foreshadow. Just that this was slippery ground, and that they’d have to be watchful or they’d “skid.” How did you read this scene?

Also, I think Kalki was cast for the way she looks. The character is that of someone who doesn’t look Indian, so that Emraan can tell her “India aapko suit nahin karega.” And then she surprises him by biting the fingers of the man who jumps on the autorickshaw — thus proving that she is as “Indian” than he is, perhaps more so. So they needed someone who could be mistaken for a dainty thing, but who’s really as savage as everyone else. She’s as (deliberately) progammatic a part of the microcosm as everyone else — a Tamilian, a Rajput, a Muslim, and so on.

vishal yogi: I would say that PST too is more “Indian” than this, and the loose yardstick I use is whether an Indian audience exposed only to Indian cinema will be able to follow (and be entertained/engaged by) what’s going on. I’d think that that audience would be a little baffled by “Shanghai,” and no amount of badly-thrust-in item songs can alleviate this disconnect.

When Kalki and Abhay both slip on the floor, I felt this immediate concern for Emraan’s character as he began to walk across; that’s the only reason I started to read a lot into that scene. And at the end, out of the three of them he “stumbled” the least, so to speak (Kalki lost it and mercilessly attacked the driver; Abhay was one foot out the door before he was convinced to turn around).

So, you’re saying Kalki is this generation’s Tom Alter? 😛 Although, yes she brings an innate vulnerability which always makes her character likable. I just felt there was so much more potential to her role.

Nice post – mostly agree with you BR. Was dis-satisfied about the following – noted them below (have highlighted the same points in Jai Arjun Singh’s blog too):
1)why couldn’t Prosenjit’s and Abhay’s character be Bengali and north Indian (respectively)? Prosenjit’s Hindi and Abhay’s Tamil accent (IMHO-of course I wud defer to your view on Tamil accent 🙂 But it was the inconsistency of the accent that didn’t work for me – unlike say, Mohanlal in ‘Company’) were not upto the mark and took away something from their otherwise competent performances.This is a particularly relevant point given that these actors were decided before finalizing the screenplay.
2)The ‘Bharat Mata’ song, while well done on a stand-alone basis, was more suited in a Madhur Bhandarkar movie
3)the almost complete lack of background music was jarring and took away something from the storytelling – it is a very difficult thing to pull off and ‘Shanghai’ IMHO didn’t succeed in this aspect
4)Why Vishal-Shekhar for music direction in this one – somehow, music seems to have gotten a step-motherly treatment in this movie – very unlike Dibakar

Any specific thoughts on the above?

P.S. – BTW, did you know that Prosenjit is yesteryears’ star Viswajeet’s son, started his career in Hindi films as a ‘chocolate-boy’ romantic hero with ‘Andhiyan’ (you may youtube. The movie also starred Mumtaz and Shatrughan Sinha. Praosenjit’s Hindi was much better then)and was offered ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’ before Salman Khan? a delicious ‘what-if’ scenario for a bollywood buff, no? 🙂

Regarding the language issue, I thought that Abhay Deol’s character spoke in a slight Tamil accent in once scene and no accent in the rest of the movie. Also, in recent movies, there is a tendency to have lines that were constructed in English and translated word-by-word. Traces of this were there even in this movie, (I can’t remember the exact instances but some of Kalki’s lines for example)

When you say there was nothing “new” in the political thriller, what exactly are you looking for? Surely by that standard, as a nation, we have well gone past any attempt by our filmmakers to shock us politically. Just because we are insulated from the reality does not mean the subject lacks gravitas. I think the movie was investing most of its energies into the character of the bureaucrat.That he was in charge of the Bharatnagar land acquisition initially and was hesitant to take up his added responsibility, was no coincidence. It all built up to that scene when he confronts his senior bueraucrat and bullies him(Farooqe Shaik was not a politician here). Apart from this the silent twist with the doctors wife joining the IBP was extremely subtle. It was laced with irony and wit, and for me that seemed more than enough ride for a gripping movie.

1) “why couldn’t Prosenjit’s and Abhay’s character be Bengali and north Indian (respectively)?” Because a microcosm means you have to have a representative India filled with people from all over — a Rajput, a Tamilian, etc. A more valid question might be: Why couldn’t Abhay’s character have been played by a Tamil actor?

3) The lack of score didn’t bother me at all.

4) “Why Vishal-Shekhar?” But why not? They make music. The film needs music. Nobody talked about OLLO’s music, because it wasn’t by abig name, and if roping in big music director’s adds to the value of the package, why not?

prasun: I quite like the way Dibakar Banerjee uses language. His films (and films like Delhi Belly) are the rare instances where the Hindi/English mix comes off sounding right, unlike Cocktail (whose trailer I saw before Shanghai). I kept thinking: Why don’t you guys just speak English, dammit?

Also, the traces of Tamil need not be in the “accent”, as you put it. It’s in the subtler details like “bha” being pronounced as “ba”, because there is no “bha” in Tamil. And you can acquire it as you speak, but there are times you lapse into “ba.” I thought that was beautifully done.

Partha: Reg. “When you say there was nothing ”new” in the political thriller, what exactly are you looking for?” I guess I’m looking for something that tells me more about the situations we’re handed. I did not find any particularly intriguing insights — they all seemed to me fairly stock situations. Take away the detailing in the film, and what do you really have that we haven’t seen earlier?

“Apart from this the silent twist with the doctors wife joining the IBP was extremely subtle.”

I didn’t see this as a twist. There’s a big hint earlier on when she makes a determined speech on a news channel about her husband’s condition. It’s very well done (in the sense that it’s not harped on), but it wasn’t surprising to me.

The language in these movies is definitely better, but every once in a while there is an odd line that would have worked better in English. To me, it appeared that Abhay Deol’s character was a Tamil who had grown up in Delhi – and therefore spoke Hindi like a Dilliwala – but still spoke Tamil at home (he talks to his mom in one of the earlier scenes). To my untrained ear, his Tamil didn’t sound like a native speaker. So it was weird when he “lapses” in the boardroom scene with Kaul. Just my perception though.

Brangan, I have not seen Shanghai, because it did not release in the cinema halls here in the town stay at in US. But given that I admire the logical way you analyze movies, I am surprised by this comment that you make: “Take away the detailing in the film, and what do you really have that we haven’t seen earlier?”
Isn’t modern cinema a lot about detailing, style, and adding grey shades to those once one dimensional characters? Didn’t ‘kaminey’ (I know I know people loved Kaminey and I will probably get lynched for saying this) work along the same lines, as in give us colorful characters in the police offers, the maharashtra-loving bhai, the wacky/weirdo brothers who made money out of horse racing? Take all that away, and we don’t have much of anything that I had not seen before – a movie where things go wrong at every move, plans do not work out, and at the climax, usually through a fight, everything falls in place. I can think of Hera Pheri, Hungama, 99, House Full….wrong of me to compare these movies to one another, but aren’t they incomparable mainly because of the treatment, the detailing and the character building?

disagree with you here again. what new intriguing insight this film offer which one didn’t know? I think the question should be what new intriguing insight this film offer which one didnt know in films? Name 3 Indian films, (name 1 with the exception of Hazaro Khawaishen aisi), which dealt with political corruption and the public apathy with as much integrity? yes may be the know-all couch intellectuals amongst us is inured towards the happenings and with no ‘big-revelation’ or the so called orgasmic moments to shock us. Saw the film with my fiancée who reports to the Commissioner of a state, she was shocked, despite seeing the same happenings(or non happenings) day in and day out. For me the point of the film was just that, apathy, and that shocks in its completeness. Also have heard many folks complain about not explaining many things, well these are the same folks who complain about the spoon feeding in Indian cinema. (Again you keep mentioning things vaguely about being Indian cinematically, don’t understand the concept, indianness of cinema,curious, could you elaborate)This one didn’t and yet if you look closely everything is explained. Why can’t a film-maker make things which have stopped being shocking, and what makes it inferior if it is engaging even if you knew it all. For us the trajectory was pretty predictable, including the climax, and yet the wonder was the tension DB managed to sustain. Agree with you about the first 20 mins or so, pretentious long takes of Kalki’s face that didn’t contribute to anything and so on, the two item songs, distracting camera work..commercial compulsions of a higher budget may be, experimentation.. but then towards the second half it had has hooked. planning a second look soon, would recommend one for you.

“even the big reveal carries no charge…”, somehow BR I thought that was the beauty of the film..sort of like a japanese haiku or painting,that through all the murkiness, there is a kind of no charge existence we live in, apathy or whatever.

For a mainstream movie to have the audience in the hall, without waltzing in and out unlike the infamous thaniavarthanam music academy vadaai cases, here the audience actually stayed until the credits rolled and was over…almost waiting for something else to happen.For me the draw was that he wove silences and longshots along with the two item numbers that was quickle dispensed with..

I would like to ask the same question that Apu has, Mr. Rangan. Lots of films tread familiar ground, and turn out to be enjoyable precisely because of the detailing. And you have written about that before. About ‘Udaan’, you said, “The find-yourself story arc may be fairly predictable, but the detailing is the thing that makes this superb first feature soar.” So, you admitted that there is hardly anything new or novel about the story arc of ‘Udaan’, but that it is the detailing that makes the film “superb.” Why, then, do you dismiss ‘shanghai’ despite the fact that it has such awesome detailing? Why are you not willing to overlook the familiarity of the subject matter–as you did in the case of ‘Udaan’–and laud the film for what it is? I mean, there are hardly any “new” stories out there; almost all films have plots that have precedents in other, earlier films. The best that any director can do is to take a familiar story and enliven it with his own touch–through his own detailing, in other words. And I feel Banerjee has done that with this film. I agree that the film is not groundbreaking, but it does succeed in pulling us into the story of three people who try, in their own ways, to fight the rampant corruption in India. You are right that this corruption is something which many of us have become inured to, but does that mean no films should be made on the subject? It brings me back to my original question: a subject matter (be it the adolescent angst and aspirations in ‘Udaan’ or political corruption in ‘shanghai’) may be familiar, but if a director decides to tackle it nevertheless and adds his own brand of exquisite detailing to it (as both Motwane and Banerjee have), isn’t that quite an accomplishment?

Apu/Abhirup/Anushil Gupta: When you say that I have a “logical” way of admiring films, I hope you don’t mean that there is no “emotional” component — because a reaction to a film consists of the conscious things you register (i.e. the “logical”) as well as the unconscious ways in which it made you react. And a review is a bit of both, which is why you find — as Abhirup did — that the very things you like in one film may not be what you like in another, or the things that made you admire one film aren’t enough to make you admire another.

So when I say “Take away the detailing in the film, and what do you really have that we haven’t seen earlier?,” guess I mean that I admired the detailing in a logical way, but beyond that the film didn’t make me feel anything, and the details were all that stood out. There wasn’t anything unconscious that made me react to anything *beyond* those details.

As you say, the sameness isn’t the problem. But the fact there’s nothing beyond the detailing is a problem (at least to me). Unlike Anushil, I didn’t feel any tension. By the end of Udaan (because Abhirup brought it up, and which I reviewed here), I was rooting for the kid to escape — and that’s not a film that has many obviously “dramatic” moments either. But the director shaped his characters and his staging so that you still had an emotional investment in what happened, and that emotional investment wasn’t there for me here.

As I mentioned, I got the sense of the director being “above” this material, and that was a bit of a turn off as well. But I hope that this review doesn’t give the sense that I did not like the movie. I probably don’t rate it as highly as some people, but I did like it, and tried to point out what I liked before I came to address my problems with it.

anamika: Yes, but didn’t that reveal come through like an afterthought? The way the film was shaping up, it didn’t matter whether the answers were there or not, and even if Kalki hadn’t found out about the guy at the end, the film would have still fit your thesis of “all the murkiness, there is a kind of no charge existence we live in.”

Fair enough, Mr. Rangan. But I still think that the film’s detailing elevate it despite the familiar premise. I would further argue that it is not solely about details either, that it has characters and situations that elicit an emotional reaction. For example, when that aging truck driver (the one who had been reluctant to get involved in the plan to kill Dr. Ahmadi, but was forced to do so) says, “Jeena haram lagta hain, paar marne se daar bhi toh lagta hain”, I was quite moved. Jogi’s recounting of his cowardly escape from his hometown, and the way he said it–Emraan Hashmi did a good job of sounding candid and looking ashamed in that scene–was also oddly touching. I could name many other moments. But of course, a scene or a film that moved me need not do the same for you, and vice versa. Your take on ‘Shanghai’ is a good read, as usual; it’s just that I feel you were too harsh on it. Whatever may be the film’s drawbacks, to call it a “hollow shell” is unjustified in my opinion. A hollow shell of a movie is one that has no ideas or craft worth the name, and which has been made without any thought, care, concern or vision. ‘housefull 2’, for instance. Surely that doesn’t hold true for ‘Shanghai’? I think the film is better than you made it appear in your review. That’s all. Thanks for your reply.

No matter what Abhirup said above, I have faith that BR will always stick to speaking his mind 🙂 His article sealed my decision to not watch this movie 😉

My biases and reasons are scattered, and one of them is to watch cinema outside the influence of Hollywood – for example there are some fine directors in Russian, Turkish and Iranian cinema. Maybe its wishful thinking, but I dont see why Indian cinema cant have its own unique stamp – sure its bound to be more rural than urban – but then, we as a civilization have lived much closer to Nature than the western ones. And maybe a more spirituality based tradition might be more challenging to depict in a visual medium than a material (western) culture. But where there’s an outline, there’s always a way.

Its just that we have this ingrained sense of inferiority about our past and the culture it brings – post the British rule, which is accelerating as we go ga ga over american pop culture. We salivate and drool when Indian cinema incorporates borrowed elements, but would that hold, if someone went in the opposite direction?

I went a bit off track, but I think I was able to verbalize a bit about what could be imagined to be potentially Indian. Criticism (of cinema, literature, etc) is usually rooted and shaped by dominant (western) perceptions as depicted by the evolution of cinema in the West – and if this school of thought cant dissect something that was never in their field of analysis, that is their problem.
Maybe that’s why neither Adaminte Makan Abu nor Jodái-e Náder az Simin (A separation) could have won their holy grail – the Oscars.

Glad you explained Brangan. It just seemd that you were using a different set of standards for this movie, and it was important for me, who has not seen the movie, to understand that.
And no, by ‘logical’, I did not mean a dispassionate or unemotional analysis, what I really meant was that you usually look at all aspects of a movie and do not dismiss the movie by just saying ‘bakwas’ or ‘awesome’. There are a lot more nuances in your review, but I understand what you say about the overall ‘feel’.

Brangan, hi. I had few problems with your review of Shanghai. I loved the way you brought in details from the film, and appreciated those, but I also saw a sense of deliberate skepticism to berate the movie purely because it doesn’t have the loud thrust of an entertainer? The director is “above” the material, according to you, but I would say he drove the material single-handedly by adding nuances. Isn’t the material symptomatic of the largely available political realities? Like, what has changed to really manifest that change into movie making? Should Anna Hazare be fictionalised on screen as a crusader, and will that be a supplication for change in art? I don’t understand the need to dismiss the movie on that account. And on that note, not everyone has seen Z and neither have I. I would love to see it. And, I believe the seeming absurdity of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ was a poignant distraction to involve the audience in the multiple realities outside ‘the hall’. I believe the movie has ample dystopia with moments of hope, and I would ask, what is the formula to entertain while putting a message across? Is it by an Indianised version of A Clockwork Orange, where the grotesque takes over the narrative? And, will that be new?

Vishal yogi: “Its just that we have this ingrained sense of inferiority about our past and the culture it brings – post the British rule, which is accelerating as we go ga ga over american pop culture. We salivate and drool when Indian cinema incorporates borrowed elements, but would that hold, if someone went in the opposite direction?”

Not true. Today we all live in a globalized world where no culture is insulated from other. There is always a constant give and take. Iranian cinema borrows from Hollywood. Hollywood borrows from Hong Kong cinema and so on. If no one borrows much from Indian cinema that means we aren’t making films with our own original grammar that is powerful or good enough to attract others. WE will wait for such a film and applaud it when it comes. Adaminte Makan Abu obviously is not that film.

Incidentally A separation did win the Best Foreign Film Oscar… not to mention box office picking of 19 million USD ( It was made for 800,000 USD)

And again there is nothing wrong with incorporating Hollywood aesthetics in Indian films. But Shanghai is not really Hollywood. if at all it is inspired by Z , which is European cinema.

Ironically enough, I find your review to be just what you deem to hate. An intellectually-propped up critique of a film that is being compared to either earlier films or is being judged by your understanding of “audience”. Did you even get the point of the film? I don’t think so from what I read. And you wouldn’t have gone on about Z if you did. The film talks of small, personal victories being the only thing that can happen in today’s India, no major change of the system. How is that irrelevant?

If you like entertaining films and by entertainment you mean laughs…say you didn’t think this was it. To presume what the filmmaker was making was “sophisticated Hollywood film” makes you seem ignorant as do a lot of points you make. I am not saying you SHOULD like the film; all I m saying it is view a film for what it is. Not a thing to be compared to a Director’s previous films and not a film to be superficially analysed in terms of acting, writing etc etc.

Utkal Mohanty: “…we aren’t making films with our own original grammar that is powerful or good enough to attract others.”

Indian civilization has a longer history than most other cultures – and we could have drawn from the rich past – but most of that history is “encoded” in Sanskrit – which we have disconnected from. Besides that, the second disaster (currently shaping up) is that the regional Indian languages are also slowly being swallowed up under the umbrella of english. Think 30-40 years ahead, & Indians would be content with a functional grasp that does not extend to literature, philosophy or thought processes.
How many readers of this blog can claim to actually read outside english *and* appreciate the same?

So even if a film maker surmounted the above obstacles, perhaps he/she would choose to not take the risk because the audience expectations were already shaped by global trends?

We are the only country that exists “in translation”.
For example, people happily chanting Sanskrit hymns and mantras without knowing an iota of the language itself.

To quote from an article elsewhere,
“Language like life, like faith, encodes the identity of a people.
Bi- and trilingual cultures would fall silent before the blistering array of languages India is home to: five language families,14 major writing systems, 400 spoken languages, thousands of dialects.”

Its a shame that our diverse landscape is rapidly getting homogenized by english.

I find this surprising, to say the least – what did The Great Gatsby tell the Jazz Age that the Jazz Age didn’t know about itself? Did it shock people of that time? Is art to be judged by its shock value? If yes, then Madhur Bhandarkar is the truest artist around.

I consider DB with the best storytelling sense in Bollywood. He has that knack and with varied topics has managed to tell a good story. For once, I was disappointed, with Shanghai.

I believe that this was his toughest story to ‘show’ – commenting on the politics of our times; the scope is very broad and challenging. Both in terms of setting and characters of the story ‘Z’.

He has followed ‘Z’ (the film) to a good extent except for one big change: creating the (Kalki) character of Shalini, a lover, who takes forth the battle to get the criminal behind bars. Or well…she is supposed to.

This is a problem, or a challenge very difficult to deal with: trying to put a passive character at the center of the story. Then…dealing with multiple narratives and intending to focus on stories of other key figures. The danger is in keeping track of the core of the story.

The big flaw for me (as Utkal pointed out in the first comment) is his strategy of execution to tell the story. With regards to cinematography and editing.

He goes hand-held for most of the times, which gets jarring over the time; worse, it takes you away from the characters. I am sure the Shanghai crew will back their strategy but shakiness, all the way, even if justified, is very hard to execute. It can work, if the characters are developed and arc well; you need emotional resonance. Shanghai doesn’t exude that.

Hand-held relates to certain tension and for most parts the tension isn’t there. Even though to be fair there’s a conflict at play. What hampers this is the editing. The quick-paced editing takes you out of scenes too quick to feel the (emotional) impact. Again, either they didn’t get good footage (!) or it was deliberate, which I would like to believe. There are moments when the characters (especially, Shalini) seem to linger on too much on the camera. Besides, the transitions seemed to take you out of things. Now…that could very well be what DB wanted but they do take you out. At least me.

For me, Kalki was alright. I thought the direction and editing made things seems bad for her. As for Hashmi, he was effective but at times DB went the Kashyap way, which I can’t relate to – focusing on character traits that ought to appear cute / funny – taking you out of the story; this is highlighted especially by the (lame?) dialogues.

I admire the dude for trying to tell this story. For trying multiple narratives. For making a comment on the system at play. For getting good performances. Well even for the ‘detailing’, which many critics have stressed on; sometimes I don’t know what’s the big deal – you need that stuff. I mean, yes, I appreciate the sets and the ‘real’ locations, which I salute DB a lot for but you need that for the sake of the story; plus it’s not Wake Up Sid stuff, where struggling young adults have a house that should have a rent of 50K/month! But then…those films are another ‘genre’.

One angle as some have pointed out – some of the stuff seems naive. This is a ‘serious’ picture in a way. Focusing on ‘realistic’ stuff. I am not disturbed by the songs et al. In fact, I won’t be surprised to find that the Bollywood dance show actually happens. Am sure it can be worse. Is Shalini plain dumb to not understand how the system works?

Krishnan is the smart cookie and Deol plays him well but what spoils stuff is the weak writing and quick cuts. I don’t know why Krishnan avoids talking to the ‘activists’ till the very end. One cliched masala-movie stuff: quick resolution when Deol takes on Sheikh – “i know you have done this, i know you have nexus et al…” What’s the point? To be impressed that our man has integrity. Well, you were on the right track, here’s a character caught in-between, here’s a dude who stands for the principles you stand for, but does DB emphasize the struggle. He highlights for sure but the turn-around is too quick and goes for a quick-fix.

The big point is – Which characters you relate to? How emotionally affecting the story is? He was there and…wasn’t. I thought the story had meat but…it was poor execution. Trying too much. Doing too much. Moving around too much – the camera, literally!

Made in 1969, the scale, when it comes to having gang-fights is kinda bigger. But DB follows the film to a good deal. The big difference is the narrative flow. ‘Z’ flows simply even though it’s a complex film – no straight-forward protagonist. However, by making the judge (Krishnan) the key guy, who keeps following up, you are more in sync with the story. Garvas does less and achieves much more.

Again, you have pointed out numerous nuances of this film that have escaped the perspective of many other reviewers, and as expected, it is a joy to read your observant views but I disagree with your overall opinion of this film, especially considering its coolly ironic and superbly metaphorical ending. Costas-Gavras’ “Z” which was not all that great in the first place, might have been released in more politically charged times but DB’s sanguine depiction of his film’s contemporary Indian milieu has a vibrant authenticity to it that is relelvant no matter how any other similarly-themed films we have seen.

Banerjee, as Khosla ka Ghosla showed, is an optimist and that is why he injects this largely stolid narrative with last-minute drama as if to display that he believes in gunning for redemption no matter how fatalistic or ridiculous it appears. The pic’s very end however re-cements his concurrent seemingly paradoxical credentials as a realist. And I dont subscribe to the generalization however tempting, of the “Indian audience’s inbuilt craving for..” There are plenty amongst us who inspite of our spiced blood, who can fully appreciate and even enjoy “low-key supposedly Western kind of sophisticated film-making”.There is space after all for all kinds of good films.

Mr. Rangan’s opinion about Shanghai is bang-on accurate. It is at best a pretentious narrative, pretentiously executed – the detailing-shetailing etc. etc as he mentions. I am not surprised that so many of our ‘A list’ reviewers loved Shanghai, and panned a truly moving film like Ishaqzaade. The problem with them is that can only see (and praise) overt complexity, they can’t see the complexity inherent in overtly simple stuff. Mr. Rangan can. I am impressed :).

“In a sense, the title could refer to Banerjee as well. Like the politicians in the film who want to sacrifice India for a shining simulacrum of China, he’s rejecting the inbuilt cravings of Indian audiences in favour of a low-key, Western kind of sophisticated filmmaking, easier to admire from a critical distance than be entertained by up close”

What are you talking about? when did paying attention to detail become a western kind of sophisticated film making? and what the heck are the inbuilt cravings of indian audiences? a yet another saif ali-deepika padukone love kal parso? Your review shows how unbelievable you were that you got to see a movie like shanghai in your lifetime and you are still trying to save your face because you had already surrendered to a certain kind of “inbuilt” expectation from indian cinema. You should go watch Golmaal 5. Unbelievable!

” There’s a lingering sense here of wanting to rise above the material, which is fine, but then why pick this material in the first place? ”

Because you were unable to answer this self raised question…you have missed the hidden chameleon which is the theme of the film.
you think dibakar will take the plot from the Novel Z..merely to reproduce an already famous film that has won an oscar..in Indian setting?Is dibakar as banal as that?
the film is a merciless critique of the middle class mentality…..and all its talk of…we hate corruption.
the film has been consciously made drama dry and is not a social commentary but an insight into indian pyschology.
all the characters in the movie are gray.But the biggest of all the villains is Abhay Deol.
the fact that tenders r being invited in bharat nagar…..in which a lot of money can be made by the politicians and the bureaucrats and the CM is sending him to videsh on a decorative post at this time…..is another reason y abhay is pissed off from the govt.
did u notice…..every one was asking abhay…cm ji aapse bahut khush hain..and smiling….why was that?they were making fun of him…as it often happens in bureaucratic circles.
also,the fact that this case was given to abhay..and not to any one else…why was that?becoz everyone knew that the death of ahmedi was a murder and not an accident…..so public sentiment was against the govt…..still abhay(by the very nature of his job was not supposed to do a through investigation)…therefore….who will become the scapegoat for not doing through investigation and pinning down the culprit?Abhay..ofcourse.
abhay was disenchanted for all these reasons…and wanted his pie in the bharat nagar tender thing…so he made his move..
hence,the biggest of all the villians is abhay.the struggle abhay is going through ..is of all the things certainly not the struggle of conscience…whether to opt for justice or go with injustice?abhay’s struggle is the struggle of macbeth…..shud i follow this case strongly and fuck the government(it is obvious from the beginning that the govt. has a role in the killing)….should i be ambitious?or should i just finish my job..and go to the foreign country on a decorative post…away from the main source of power politics.that is his struggle…and finally he decides to be ambitious..and makes farrukh the offer.now,in the new regime it is obvious abhay will play a vital role..and farrukh will be in awe of him.
The biggest villian No. 2 is kalki….more on her later.
just rewatch the movie closely again.
shanghai is such a deceptive and deep film…not only the best of dibakar….but as far as the hitchcockian depth of its theme is concerned….certainly it deserves a cult status like ardh satya
though i loved the movie gow very very much….loved the visiting vengeance subversion of the prankster anurag in it….that film is nothing when compared to shanghai.

I had this odd feeling that I was missing something – the movie seemed familiar and predictable, and with any other director, I would take it as a fairly timepass, well made thriller. But given DB’s other movies, I kept looking for something else that would give me an “aha” moment. And it wasn’t the ending, for sure. While I hadn’t anticipated Aruna becoming the next cutout, at the same time it wasn’t a mindbending twist, and the expression of Dr Ahmedi looking gobsmacked at the end was only amusing, not shocking, if that is what DB intended by insering that shot there. The only thing that held me was actually Deol’s character. I thought Krishnan was perhaps the key to the movie, not Ahmedi, not Kalki’s character, nor that of Hashmi who was interesting too, showing more depths of guile than his initial simple minded approach would have indicated. Krishnan is the enigmatic one – he is shown to be vindictive in the beginning (when he is told he is like a haathi who never forgets an insult) and when I was pondering why the character had to be South Indian at all, I figure he is the outsider in this cow-belt movie, showing the “other” India, the educated, conservative one and on both sides you can see how this contrast affects decisions. To the northies, Krishnan comes across as a puppet whose need for structure and convention can be used against him, there is a palpable contempt in the way Farooq Shaikh’s character talks to him, also the way the police address him. On his part, Krishnan seems to view the politics around him with tightly concealed distaste that peeks through every now and then, using his precise clothing (loved how the tie comes up again and again) and reserved demenour to delineate that he may work there but he is not part of this circus. Was he really fighting the good cause when he gets the government toppled in the end? Or was he actually telling all those who pushed him around, kept him in the dark about coalition politics, assumed he could be bought off for a Stockholm posting, that he was the smart one, not them? He is shown relishing the puppeteering in the end – responsible for changing the fates of the CM, the Central Government minister, the cops, the Chief Secretary. I think Deol did a fabulous job with the accent – he didn’t let it become a caricature a la Mehmood, not even as broad and annoying as Konkona as Mrs Iyer – like most southies who have lived in the north, his Hindi was practically accentless except under stress – I liked the way he lapsed into a slight Tamilian drawl (“Ennnqqquiry commission”) when he got hassled, and then back to accentless speech when he had composed himself.

well its satisfying at last….dat in India some people are here to care about d ground stories….really a great work to managing the society from slum to the MP house…. i eagerly waiting for movies like dis….nice judgement Dibakar with all you role… Thank you

And how relevant is this film today. Umar Khalid was shot at on his way to an event in Constitution Club, Delhi. Amazing how it came two years before 2014, and it predicted the rise of a venomous cult oriented around “development” of “Bharat nagar”.

[…] anger was his attention to details. To quote Baradwaj Rangan, my favorite Indian film writer from his review of DB’s Shanghai (till I find any better) “If God is in the details, then Banerjee’s films are certainly […]